Corporate social responsibility, strategic style and enterprise innovation: evidence from China

Abstract

We make contribution to the literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and innovation by studying how CSR affects corporate innovation activities. Using data from listed firms in China, we find that CSR derived from legitimacy has a significant positive effect on corporate innovation. Specifically, our evidence shows that firms’ internal responsibility and business partners’ responsibility can facilitate innovation activities, and the corporate strategy is the potential channel for this positive association. From the perspective of the impact of external environmental pressure, the environmental uncertainty and the shock of the industry prosperity weaken the positive effect of CSR on innovation, namely, in the case of fewer environmental uncertainties and less industry prosperity, CSR plays a stronger role in promoting corporate innovation. From the point of the influence of heterogeneity, for firms with high employee loyalty, low agency cost and few financing constraints, CSR have a stronger impact on innovation. Overall, our results suggest that CSR does have a measurable impact on corporate innovation and contributes to understanding the special role of "legitimacy" in corporate decision-making in emerging markets.